Jake Bugg: 'You never forget where you're from'

At only 19, singer-songwriter Jake Bugg is a phenomenon. He's topped the charts with his inner-city blues, dated Cara Delevingne, and even found himself compared to Bob Dylan. Craig McLean spends a week on tour with the Nottingham lad as he meets his passionate fans – and avoids the police

‘I’ve aged in the past year! I went back to England recently and didn’t get ID’d in the pub’: Jake Bugg at the Austin City Limits festival. Photograph: Julian Broad for the Observer

Early afternoon in Austin, Texas, and Jake Bugg is perhaps having cause to regret one of his most famous lyrics. It's the line from "Two Fingers", one of five singles he released last year, that goes: "Skin up a fat one, hide from the feds…"

"Our bus got pulled over by the cops in Arizona," mutters the 19-year-old, freshly arrived in one redneck state from another. Luckily his touring party had somehow "had word" in advance that they might be subject to a police search, so had taken some precautions. A sniffer dog came aboard. Twice. Its nose led to Bugg's luggage. "But they pulled it out, opened it, and all me laundry exploded out," he says, smiling, in his broad Nottingham accent. Nothing else emerged. "I never have weed in my suitcase."

At the same time, the easygoing amiability of Britain's best new singer-songwriter since the emergence of Noel Gallagher was winning the day. "I was getting on really well with this state trooper, so it would have been awkward if they'd had to arrest us." Awkward indeed. "They said: 'We know it's on here, but we can't find it.'"

In the end, Bugg thinks the friendly "feds" tipped him a wink and did the British youngster a favour. "They said: 'Well, you've just come from California, so we'd expect your bus to smell of marijuana.'"

Now, in blazing Texan heat, Bugg – dressed all in black and firmly buttoned up in a Harrington-style jacket – is considering what lies ahead. Today on the singer-songwriter's itinerary: a teatime slot at the Austin City Limits festival, another pit stop in a world tour that has lasted, more or less, for a full 18 months. Tomorrow, two flights to reach Mexico City, where the guitarist and his two-piece band are performing at the giant Corona Capital event, a few notches beneath headliners Arctic Monkeys. Then home to the UK, an appearance on Alan Carr's Chatty Man, production rehearsals, and straight into a sold-out British tour.

He will land at Heathrow a year to the day from the release of his self-titled first album. It entered the charts at number one, making Jake Bugg – 18 at the time – the youngest British male in chart history to debut at the top. Over the following 12 months he picked up a Brit nomination, a place on the Mercury Music Prize shortlist, Olympic ubiquity (his song "Lightning Bolt" was the obligatory soundtrack for any Usain Bolt highlights package), support slots with the Rolling Stones and Stone Roses, a celebrity girlfriend (Cara Delevingne, although the relationship was short-lived) and worldwide album sales topping 1m.

‘I’d never been out of England before I went on tour last year’: at Zilker Park, Austin, Texas. Photograph: Julian Broad for the Observer

Not bad for a quiet, undemonstrative lad playing old-fashioned skiffley blues, albeit rebooted with lyrics clawed from an inner-city childhood in very modern Britain. The product of a broken home, Bugg grew up in Clifton, Nottingham, once the biggest housing estate in Europe.

As the immigration officer at Dallas/Fort Worth airport said to me: "Ah, Jake Bugg… He's the new Dylan, right?" Or, he's Gallagher writing for the La's. Either way, he's a phenomenon, and Britain hasn't seen a young artist like him in yonks.

Backstage at the Austin festival, the compact, poker-faced moptop cuts a curious figure amid the vest-wearing, extravagantly tattooed American rock fraternity. He's had two solid summers of playing Glastonbury, T in the Park and multiple fields in between. Does Jake Bugg enjoy music festivals?

"Not particularly. It's either too hot or it's too cold," he replies in his default monotone.

What about touring in general? In spring last year, not long after signing a record deal, he embarked on his first run of support gigs, with Michael Kiwanuka in Europe. "That was really cool. I'd never been out of England when I did that tour. The first place I went to was Paris. And I did not like it."

All that fancy foreign muck?

"That was a toughie, getting into the food," he acknowledges.

These exchanges are typical Bugg. But his scowling demeanour isn't really the whole picture, as that Arizona lawman would attest. It's partly a defence mechanism against the fannish hysteria that increasingly attends his every move. And it's partly a put-on, a grumpy-kid act that amuses him and everyone around him.

Once you get to know Bugg, he's hilarious, airily dismissive of most of his peers ("Arctic Monkeys? I love the second record. I ain't had a proper listen to the new one, but what I've heard I haven't been a big fan of") and pithily aware of the status success has brought. "I like my clothes and I like to look smart," admits this recipient of piles of free clobber courtesy of high rollers such as Hedi Slimane at Yves Saint Laurent and Burberry's Christopher Bailey. "But I'm not someone who gets absorbed in the fashion world, 'cause it can get very controversial," he adds. This could be him being ironic, or could be a reference to his brief experience of that scene when he went out with model Delevingne – much to the tabloids' titillation ("When posh totty meets pop grotty," snarked the Sun).

Today he frowns like a trooper when I bring up his ex. When we spoke earlier this year, just after their split, he was still confused by the whole paparazzi-friendly blip in his private life. "I knew, obviously, that people wanted to take photos of her 'cause, you know, she's all over the world. But it was just confusing for me – what you gonna get out of getting a picture of me? What the fuck do you want from that? I'm just gonna smoke a fag and stand here!"

When the mood takes him, Bugg can appear reserved to the point of taciturn. Left to his own devices, "I'd just be in my bedroom, writing tunes," he admits. "I try and be productive with my spare time." Yet over the last year, "I've met a load of new friends and a lot of cool people. And they introduce you to people and you learn to be more sociable. You kind of have to be, doing this," he says, gesturing to the tape recorder sitting on the table next to his ever-present packet of fags. "Especially in America – there's no point doing the promotion if you're not gonna smile your way through it. But I do have to give myself a slap every day, tell myself how lucky I am. This is what I always wanted to do."

Bugg has been in America loads this year, including a short stint making his second album. Yes, a scant year after releasing his first, and despite touring nonstop ever since, Jake Bugg has found time to write and record a follow-up.

It's called Shangri La and is named after the studio in which it was recorded: the oceanside California base of super-producer Rick Rubin (Beastie Boys, Jay-Z, Neil Diamond, Adele, oh, everyone). And it's fantastic. Two highlights: "Song About Love", a glorious ballad – think Nick Drake meets Gram Parsons – and "Messed Up Kids", another street-real account of life in his hometown: "Johnny deals a bit of blow on the side, thinks that he's invincible, hates a fight/Jenny walks the streets alone, she was fine, but she got kicked out of her home in hard times…"

"With that song," Bugg says, "I thought I wasn't gonna sing any more stuff about coming from where I come from, and being as observational as the first record. But it was actually quite interesting to view things from a different perspective after everything that's happened. And to go back to where I'm from and have one last look."

Technically, Bugg is currently homeless. On the brief occasions he's in London he stays in hotels. He's been considering buying a flat for a while, but hasn't had time. His possessions – apart from a burgeoning collection of guitars – amount to the three suitcases he's lugging round the world, and some boxes stored in a music rehearsal space in the capital. But he did make it home to Nottingham this summer, if only to headline a local music festival, Splendour – two years after opening its smallest stage.

"In the crowd there was a girl on some lad's shoulders that I went to school with for years. And she always said to me: 'I'll never get your music – why do you listen to that crap?'" he smiles, referring to his adolescent love of Don McLean, the Everly Brothers and Johnny Cash. "And she was singing all the words to the songs. That was mad."

The visit also inspired "Messed Up Kids". "That wasn't the reason for my visit; that was just kinda what I stumbled on when I went back for one last look. That was quite interesting. And quite weird. Nottingham's a place that I know better than anywhere in the world, but I've been away from it for such a while."

Does he still feel connected to it? "Yeah, you never forget where you're from. But I spent so much time there – I lived there all my life – and there was a big world out there, and I wanted to see it."

‘I think I can come across as a bit of a twat, to be honest’: Jake Bugg onstage at Zilker Park. Photograph: Julian Broad for the Observer

Hence, in part, the work ethic that has produced two albums in one year. I spend five days with Bugg, in Texas and Mexico, and he's clearly a grafter, turning in quick-fire radio interviews and acoustic singalongs galore. He's also hugely entertaining company, generous and welcoming and straightforward. He likes his music, his band and crew, his football, his weed, his table tennis, his clothes, and that's pretty much it. As both a lad and as an artist, Jake Bugg is proper.

That said, "I think I can come across as a bit of a twat, to be honest," he admits with a hint of a smile. "I got a couple of tweets not long ago – 'Jake Bugg, you make great music but why do you have to be such a douche?'"

They don't think he's a douche in Mexico. At the airport Bugg is met by a proper boy-band fan crush. At the Corona Capital festival he's greeted with a deafeningly rapturous audience reaction and two offers of marriage. As he saunters offstage, I ask how that was for him.

At first Bugg gamely tries to maintain his cool. "Awright," he replies with a shrug, his T-shirt sticking to him with sweat. "Decent," he adds. Then the lips twitch into a full smile. "Pretty fucking mental. It was insane, all the singing along. Was not expecting that." He's clearly chuffed to bits.

In Texas I had asked what he cares about. He had thought for a minute before deciding on family and friends, "obviously. I think the purpose of life is for it to be lived. And sometimes I think to myself when I'm really knackered: why am I doing this? You're doing it 'cause you love travelling the world and playing music. When my time passes, I don't necessarily want to be remembered. But if there was some slight way you could make a slight change that's better for the world, then I'd feel like I've done something with my years."

Jake Bugg, then: a wise – and staggeringly talented – head on young shoulders. Although the boy himself doesn't think he's that young any more.

"I've aged terribly in the last year!" he said. "I went back to England recently and didn't get ID'd at either pub I went to. And you have to look over 25 now, which makes it even more annoying."